Heirs of Prophecy - Lisa Smedman [55]
"Looks like bird boy is awake," he growled. "Go tell Drakkar."
–*¦ * -S
They dragged Leifander down a maze of hallways to a small room with windowless walls of damp stone, a low ceiling, and a floor stained with dark brown splotches. A human skull and some bones lay jumbled carelessly in a corner, gnawed clean save for a few jagged scraps of red and a patch of faded hair. The air smelled of sewage and decaying flesh, and the only illumination came from two oil lamps with wicks that needed trimming, set above each of the room's two exits. They filled the air with soot that roiled against the ceiling before disappearing out through a blackened
ceramic pipe. From inside this ventilation pipe came a skittering noise like the scurrying of rodent feet.
While two men stood by with swords at his throat, a third-the blond guard-attached each of Leifander's manacles in turn to a metal bolt on the floor, forcing him into a spread-eagle position on his back.
When he was done, Leifander could barely move. Shivering with cold, all he could do was glare as the men taunted him, drawing the points of their swords slowly down his bare chest and stomach, then tarrying at his groin, threatening to emasculate him. He spat on the boots of the blond guard, defying him, and received a kick that made his ears ring and caused bright points of light to dance just in front of his eyes.
Leifander tensed, expecting further kicks, but instead the guards departed the way they had come; the closing door muffled their footsteps. Left to himself, Leifander struggled against the manacles in the futile hope that one of the bolts on the floor might prove loose. One was, but though he writhed like a snake, chafing wrists and ankles raw, he could neither tug it out nor slip his bonds.
Cursing, he regretted not having attacked the guards as they marched him at sword point down the short hallway. At least that would have been a quick death. Now he would reap the bitter rewards of cowardice.
A moment later, the room's second door opened. Through it stepped a monstrosity so disfigured that Leifander at first had trouble recognizing it as a man. It walked erect on two legs and wore purple hose and a black velvet doublet heavily embroidered with gold thread and studded with gems, but its head was horribly misshapen. The right side of the face looked human, aside from a single fang that curved over the mustached upper lip, but the left side was covered with a mass of black, serpentine scales, its eye bulging and pupil slit ted. The hands were even worse. Emerging from the end of one sleeve was a birdlike talon, but with what looked hke wriggling pink worms where the fingers should be. The other hand was human in shape but covered with a patchwork of fur, scale, and feathers. A heavy gold ring decorated one finger. The legs were strangely jointed, and while one foot was booted, the other was bare, ending in a cloven hoof. The man lurched into the room with a jerky, shuffling gait, his hoof clomping and booted foot twisting and dragging.
Behind him came a tall, dark-skinned man-fully human-wearing smoke-gray clothes. A thin line of beard framed his jaw, and his eyes glittered. He carried a knotted wooden staff into which thorns had been pressed, and upright thorns crowned its tip. He closed the door behind himself, then leaned on his staff, regarding Leifander with eyes utterly devoid of mercy.
"Is this the shapeshifter?" the deformed man asked.
"It is, Lord Mayor."
The first man cocked his half-serpent head and stared at Leifander through a slitted eye. "Fascinating." A human tongue flickered in and out through his hps, then he added, "Have him change, Drakkar."
The man with the staff-Drakkar-twitched his lips into the briefest of condescending smiles. "Lord Mayor, we have taken away his magic. With it, he would have escaped by now."
"What did he use, then? A wand? Or was it a ring, or a cloak?"
"None of those things, Lord Mayor." Drakkar gestured with his staff, indicating Leifander's forehead.